St Pancras Hotel, London

click photo to enlarge
George Gilbert Scott was one of the most prolific and able of Britain's Victorian architects. He came from an architectural dynasty and is sometimes referred to as "the middle Scott" to distinguish him from his similarly named father and son. In the 1860s he had many projects underway including three of national importance - the Foreign Office, the Albert Memorial and St Pancras railway station and hotel. Scott's office trained many architects who went on to achieve fame in their own right but he kept close control of all that passed through the firm, and ensured that the high standards that characterised his work was maintained.

St Pancras railway station on Euston Road was the London terminus for the Midland Railway. Scott's Gothic-based design incorporated the engine sheds and platforms (the latter designed by William Henry Barlow) as well as the rooms needed for the station and the Midland Hotel that fronted the building. The functional engine sheds and the elaborate Gothic brickwork, towers and spires admirably convey the Victorian fascination with and ambivalence about buildings as art as well as the allure of new technology and engineering. My photograph shows a large part of the main elevation facing Euston road, but doesn't include the curved wing out of view on the left of the frame.

I've tried for a photograph of this elevation before but haven't produced anything that satisfies me. On a recent visit I decided that the ornate lamp post might be a suitable "anchor" for an asymmetrical composition, and so it proved.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: St Pancras Hotel, London
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 15mm (108mm - 30mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The strainer arch

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When I first visited Wells Cathedral in Somerset many, many years ago I knew there were two things that I particularly wanted to see. The first was the worn stairs to the Chapter House, the subject of a famous 1903 photograph entitled "Sea of Steps" by the British photographer, Frederick H. Evans (1853-1943). His platinotype image appealed to me because of its purely photographic qualities but also because the subject was an aspect of church architecture, an interest of mine then that continues to this day.

The other thing I searched out that day was the famous strainer arches under the crossing tower. These were inserted as bracing in the arches to the nave and transepts (the choir arch is braced by a screen) by William Joy in 1338. The existing, orthodox arches had begun to show signs of stress after the tower had been heightened, and the "St Andrew's cross" strainer arches were the solution Joy came up with the alleviate the problem. They worked. However, opinion on the aesthetic merits of Joy's arches was divided and remains so. Some see them as an awkward intrusion while others think them an elegant answer that enlivens the interior. I like them and think they are an interesting and beautiful addition to the cathedral.

When I moved to Lincolnshire I came upon a smaller scale copy of the Wells arches in the church of St Denys in Sleaford. Here a strainer arch clearly derived from the Somerset example was inserted at the west end of the north aisle in 1853. Apparently it solves a problem with the original arch that was exhibiting movement due to the weight of the west tower. Though not on the scale of the Wells examples, and introducing a note of asymmetry to the west end of the church, Sleaford's arch is not without its utilitarian beauty.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Strainer Arch, St Denys, Sleaford, Lincolnshire
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:2500
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on Aswarby church

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I visit and photograph Aswarby church every year when we walk in the vicinity of Osbournby. Sometimes it's autumn or winter when we pass by, at other times it may be spring or summer. Whatever the time of year I never fail to admire both the building and its setting. On our recent visit it struck me that in many respects St Denys is a very typical English church. The earliest parts are twelfth century with the nave showing evidence of rebuilding in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the tower is a fine example of the fifteenth century, the last phase of Gothic. Much of the external ornament shows the inventiveness and wit of the minds of the medieval masons and sculptors who carved it.

A west tower is characteristic of English parish churches, as is a four-bay arcade and a lower, shorter chancel (this one was rebuilt in the Victorian period). The main entrance is typically through the south porch, though here, as is sometimes the case, the north door is favoured for convenience. The photograph above shows the view from the south, consequently the north aisle that projects from the nave and has its own lean-to roof can't be seen. However, such an addition is also very common. The north side was favoured for such an extension because the south side was usually chosen for burial before any other part of the churchyard.

Inside Aswarby church what we see is also very typical of what an English church offers. The view in my smaller photograph is one I took from the pulpit. It shows the bright west window seen through the tower arch. The area railed off in the corner by the north door holds the local landowner's tombs, in this case the Whichcote family. One less commonly found feature is the box pews. The Georgian period liked these for their comfort, privacy and freedom from draughts, but the Victorians often got rid of them, installing sturdy and uncomfortable pews. The rightmost box pews with the pierced, decorative woodwork are raised above the main blocks of seating and have a good view of the pulpit. This is the area reserved for the Whichcote family. Its elevated position reflects their elevated status. It also has its own fireplace!

The two boards above the tower arch are hatchments, paintings of coats of arms that were hung on the house of a deceased member of the well-to-do and often removed to the church after the burial. The Australian flag hangs in Aswarby church. This isn't unique but is unusual. It commemorates George Bass, a man who was raised in the locality, baptised at this church, and who discovered and mapped parts of Australia. The Bass Strait that separates the Australian mainland from Tasmania is named after him. It comes as no surprise to find that quite a few of the visitors to the church hail from Victoria and Tasmania.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Survival or revival

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Anyone with an interest in the history of English church architecture, visiting St James at Deeping St James in Lincolnshire for the first time, will immediately think, "What's been going on here?" It's not the basic shape of the church that you see when you walk through the churchyard gate that provokes the question: that's very conventional with the west tower, nave and aisle, chancel and south porch. What's puzzling is, firstly, the elevation of the aisle with its short buttresses topped by pilasters with no pinnacles above, the size of those windows, and the suspicious "Gothic" of the tower.

Stepping inside reveals that it was once a major church, in fact a Benedictine Priory founded by Thorney Abbey in 1139. The seven bay, Late Norman south arcade (see small photograph), with its thirteenth century triforium looks like it belongs in a much larger church. Did it ever link up with a structure of the same magnitude elsewhere in the building, or was it the start of a grandiose idea that was then slimmed down? And what about that tower. Stylistically it is Georgian Gothic, a stripped down version of the older style made palatable for a new age. It was built after the old tower collapsed in 1717, the victim of bad foundations due to repeated flooding over the centuries. There is some question over when precisely the new tower was erected, but 1732 is scratched on the exterior west wall, and this is the likely date rather than 1819 which is more carefully carved beneath the parapet.

As with much of the building in the Gothic style that the seventeenth and eighteenth century added to medieval churches we are prompted to ask whether it is a survival or a revival. That is to say, did the builders simply continue to build in the style that was for centuries the only one applied to churches, or did they deliberately forsake the classical idiom of much public building of the period and modishly seek to revive a "forgotten" style. Historians of art and architecture make much of the revival of Gothic in the eighteenth century by the likes of Horace Walpole, William Kent, Robert Adam, James Wyatt and the rest. However, it never entirely went away. Provincial churches sometimes used it in the seventeenth century, as did some colleges at Oxford and Cambridge when they were being extended. It may be that the people at Deeping St James wanted a tower that both reminded them of the one that fell down, but also showed that they were "up to date".

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Aslackby church

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In a piece about Ropsley church that I posted in 2009 I reflected on the thoughts that go through my mind when I visit a church for the first time. The other day, before the rains descended in what seemed like a permanent way, I photographed the exterior of Aslackby* church. And, though it wasn't my first visit to this building - I've been several times - the first thought that entered my mind was the same as on my first sight of it: what is that arch outline on the tower?

My first thought is that the church tower was originally a crossing tower rather than the west tower that it is now; that the present nave was once the chancel and that the arch was the drip moulding marking the place where a transept had been. I've seen such things before. Or, was there an intention to build in that way, but a change of mind resulted in the current, more traditional layout, and the drip moulding was left on the tower face, a reminder of what was to be, but never materialised. Reading Pevsner on the subject I found that he too ponders along similar lines. Whatever the reason, it adds a little mystery to this small, fairly unexceptional church that dates mainly from the fourteenth century with a few bits from earlier and rather more from later.

I've photographed Aslackby church before, but the light and sky on this January afternoon were very good, so I composed a shot from across the road, near the ford that was filling with the afternoon's plentiful rain. I'd never noticed the old-style, black and white road sign before - perhaps it has been recently been painted - so I used it in my composition as a visual counterweight to the church tower.

* for the local pronunciation of the village name Aslackby, which departs significantly from what it looks like it should be, see this post

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spires, views and hits

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Ever since July 2010 I've used Blogger's in-house hit counter to analyse the traffic that comes to this blog. It's called "Stats" and it gives a reasonable summary of information: not as much as some of the other free offerings - I also use StatCounter and Google Analytics - but enough for it to be my main port of call. Regular readers of this blog will recall that in August 2010 I posted a list of the top 10 pages by hits and speculated on why they were popular. I looked at this information again recently and found some interesting developments and, once again, more questions. The current 1 to 10 (with last August's placing in brackets) are:

1 (1) Tree shadows and architectural drawings
2 (2) Lichfield Cathedral
3 (5) The corrugated chair
4 (new) Old tools and toffee hammers
5 (3) Promenade silhouettes
6 (new) Views with spires
7 (new) The story of a blog post
8 (new) Church music
9 (new) Colour or monochrome?
10 (new) Rooks, hoar frost and adverts

I find it interesting that only four of last year's top ten feature in the current list, though given the relatively short amount of time I'd been using Stats when I did the first survey perhaps that's not so surprising. As before I'm given to wondering why these particular posts receive more hits than others. However, one of the newcomers is, I think, particularly noteworthy. The entry, View with spires, dates from as recently as May 24th 2011, yet in that short time it has become the 6th most viewed blog post with 351 hits. Not as many as the number one with 2,101, but a high number (for this blog) in quite a short period. Why? The photograph isn't what I'd call my best, and the writing that accompanies it is unremarkable. So what is it that brings so many viewers to that particular page? I haven't a clue!

Incidentally, in October 2010 I noted the top ten countries providing the hits for PhotoReflect. Here is that list compared with today's:

2010 (2011)
1 UK (UK)
2 USA (USA)
3 Australia (Australia)
4 Canada (Canada)
5 India (Germany)
6 Germany (Netherlands)
7 Netherlands (India)
8 Brazil (Poland)
9 Italy (France)
10 France (Russia)

Much less of a change here: eight countries remain in the top ten, with Brazil and Italy being replaced by the newcomers, Poland and Russia. The connection of all this with today's offering is tenuous, but my photograph sparked the line of thought that resulted in the subject of this blog post. The Swaffham church shot is a view with a spire, a lead-covered spire that looks like a later addition to a tower of about 1500. However, it seems that a spire was part of the original design, was replaced by a Gothick version in 1778, and the one we see today is a rebuilding of the eighteenth century incarnation that dates from 1897.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Winter colour and photography

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Last night I attended a talk about how to increase the amount of colour in your garden in winter. This is a challenge to all gardeners in the UK. Green and brown are easy to achieve, but the rest have to be planned. The speaker took us through four sources of plant colour - berries/fruit, leaves, bark and blooms. Quite a few of the examples he showed are present in our garden but some were new to me and he gave us a few ideas for planting. This morning, a cold and clear day, we went for a walk that took in three churches: Folkingham, Walcot and Pickworth. As we trudged over the low hills, along frosty footpaths that took us through pastures, winter wheat and vegetables, I looked about me and saw that, the blue of the sky excepted, green and brown were the dominant colours of the winter countryside too. The brown did shade into buff and almost yellow in places, and the orange bricks and pantiles of the farms and cottages added a high note here and there. But, wherever I looked it was mainly green and brown.

I took my photographs of Folkingham's pinnacled tower and the broach spires of Walcot and Pickworth. I also cast about for a few landscape shots. But, I wasn't very satisfied with much of my output largely because of the unremitting blue of the sky, its plainness relieved only by the odd vapour trail here and there. Moreover, the shadows that the sun produced were deep and dark, making the images very contrasty. So, this afternoon, as broken cloud rolled in, I went out again with my camera and took in the churches again, this time producing shots that I'm happier with. The late afternoon light, partly filtered by cloud, and with a yellow tinge, deepened the colours of everything and allowed the shadow details to be better seen.

Pickworth is one of my favourite nearby medieval churches, but it's a building that I haven't managed to photograph especially well. Today's image is the best so far - though I'm sure I can improve on it.

For a photograph of Pickworth church's fine old south door and some graffiti, see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: 7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

The broach spire

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When one considers the tools and technology available to the builders of medieval churches one can only be astonished at the wonderful structures that they managed to erect. Human muscle, wooden scaffolding, hemp ropes, steel tools and the secrets of the masonic crafts are responsible for buildings that amazed our forbears as they arose in the churchyard, and have the power to impress us still.

Gothic architecture developed over the centuries as masons and builders developed new ways of spanning ever larger spaces with ever smaller amounts of stone and wood. Windows increased in size and became filled with stone tracery as the dark churches of the twelfth century gradually evolved into the light, airy spaces of the fifteenth century. Ever larger buttresses were placed between windows allowing walls to be thinner, and the lateral forces of roofs to be supported, enabling naves to be wider to accommodate growing congregations. The ingenuity of those involved with such developments was remarkable, and as one builder introduced a new idea, so others took it up and introduced it into the building they were constructing.

This church at Frampton, Lincolnshire, is one of the first to use the thirteenth century technical innovation known as the broach spire. The broaches are the triangular shapes clasping the spire above the top corners of the tower. Their purpose is to enable the tapered octagon of the spire to fit onto the square top of the tower. It's a wonderfully elegant solution to the problem, produces very attractive spires, and enjoyed popularity for a hundred or so years. Here at Frampton (and also at Sleaford and North Rauceby, also in Lincolnshire) can be seen some of the first examples.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Symmetry

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Photographers don't like symmetry. Nor do painters, graphic artists or sculptors. But architects and designers do, and always have done!

Symmetry in building is a manifestation of the Classical mindset. Greek and Roman architecture is highly symmetrical, and so are the Renaissance styles that took their inspiration from the antique. However, the rise of the Romantic movement pushed all this to one side. The love of the wild, the untamed, the natural, all led to an admiration for architecture and design that eschewed symmetry. Thus, in landscape gardening, out went formal French parterres, and in came "informal" English parkland with its serpentine paths and lakes, and asymmetrically placed "eyecatcher" follies. Out went Palladianism, and in came asymmetrical houses and villas like Nash's Cronkhill House and Philip Webb's Red House. Interestingly Gothic architecture loved both symmetry and asymmetry. Romantic painters favoured asymmetrical compositions, and Modernists continued this love affair. Photography seems to have adopted its position by reference to painting: balanced asymmetry is in, straightforward symmetry is out.

But I like a bit of symmetry now and again! Today's photograph is of Boston Baptist Church, built in 1837, a time when English church architects had dumped Georgian Classicism, and were casting around for a new style. This rather spare Gothic characterises the period before 1840. After that date the writings of A.W.N. Pugin and the Oxford Movement pushed churches towards a Gothic based on archaeolgical principles and the careful study of real medieval buildings. The design above is interesting, but owes nothing to Pugin, and verges more on the hysterical than the historical!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off